Fight Facts: UFC Fight Night 149

Fight Facts is a breakdown of all of the interesting information
and Octagon oddities on every card, with some puns, references and
portmanteaus to keep things fun. These deep stat dives delve into
the numbers, providing historical context and telling the stories
behind those numbers.

TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC FIGHTS: 5101TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC EVENTS: 475

The
Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday headed to St.
Petersburg, Russia, for the first time and brought with it a show
filled with thrilling knockouts.
UFC Fight Night 149 featured an unusually rare spinning back
kick knockout, a bevy of fighters losing their unbeaten luster and
the most experienced headliner in organizational history.

RED VS. BLUE: At UFC 236 on April 13, all five
winners on the main card came out of the blue corner. At this
event, all five main card victors fought out of the red corner.

NOT-SO-FANTASTIC FOUR: Evloev was also the only
undefeated fighter to keep his record intact at the end of the
show, Amedovski (8-0), Fiziev (6-0) and Antonina
Shevchenko (7-0) were each handed their first career
defeats.

AHHH, MOTHERLAND!: Nine Russian fighters competed
at this event, and seven emerged victorious. Alexey
Oleynik and Gadzhimurad
Antigulov were the only two who did not prevail in front of
their countrymen.

TRUE EXPERIENCE: With 131 total fights between the
two leading up to their clash, Oleynik and Alistair
Overeem combined for the most MMA experience of any UFC
headliner.

A-OK: Alistair Overeem and Alexey Oleynik share
the same initials in their names, making this the second main event
in promotional history to feature two combatants with identical
initials. This first occurred at UFC 189, where Conor
McGregor met Chad
Mendes.

THE PERFECT NICKNAME: Overeem earned the 40th
finish of his lengthy career with a first-round knockout of
Oleynik. “The Demolition Man” held more stoppage wins than any
fighter on the card other than Oleynik held in total victories. It
was also his 33rd finish in round one.

O-WIN-NIK: With 57 victories under his belt,
Oleynik held the most wins of any fighter to ever compete in a UFC
main event. He is also one of the winningest fighters to ever
compete inside the Octagon, trailing the likes of Jeremy Horn
(80 wins) and Travis Fulton
(58 wins) at the times in their respective careers.

PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE:Sergei
Pavlovich leveled Marcelo
Golm in 66 seconds, earning his 10th career stoppage. All of
his finishes have come by knockout, and each has taken place in the
first round.

SULTAN SIGNOFF: After scoring a decision win over
Keita
Nakamura, Sultan
Aliev retired in front of home country fans. The four-fight
promotional veteran leaves the sport with a record of 15-3, as he
began his career at light heavyweight before dropping to
middleweight to compete in Bellator
MMA and then to welterweight to fight for the UFC. Aliev never
lost in Russia, going 8-0 in his native country.

MAGOMANIA:Magomed
Mustafaev landed a spinning back kick to Fiziev’s head and
finished his counterpart with follow-up punches, earning the sixth
victory by spinning back kick in company history. With the bout
contested at lightweight, half of the spinning back kick stoppages
in UFC history have come in this division.

STARTING THE NIGHT OFF RIGHT: Mustafaev picked up
a “Performance of the Night” bonus for ejecting Fiziev from the
ranks of the unbeaten with a spinning back kick in the UFC Fight
Night 149 opener. He became the first fighter to earn a post-fight
bonus in a card opener since Claudio
Puelles pulled off a kneebar on Felipe
Silva at UFC Fight Night 129 in 2018.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into UFC Fight Night
149, Tsarukyan (14 fights) and Choi (eight fights) had never lost
on the scorecards, Coelho (21 fights) and Golm (eight fights) had
never been finished and Amedovski had never fought beyond the
second round (eight fights).

NOW WE ARE FREE: Amedovski walked out to “Nelle Tue Mani” by
Andrea Bocelli from the “Gladiator” soundtrack before facing
Krzysztof
Jotko and suffered a dominant decision loss. The previous nine
uses of Bocelli were all his duet with Sarah Brightman: “Time to Say
Goodbye.” Fighters accompanied by Bocelli songs have lost seven
of those 10 recorded bouts.

Sherdog contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a
statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the
“Eminem Curse” in 2012 and working for Vice Sports and Combat
Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and
entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can
find him on twitter at
@jaypettry.